Slipping, Gripping
by bookgodess15
Summary: House hates everyone and everything. Chase can't fix that anymore than he can fix his marriage, so Chase doesn't really try. S&M, but no slash.


**Author's Notes: **My beta is a goddess. Also, I am aware of the fact that House's cane makes for a poor choice of weapon, but I liked the irony of it too much to change.

**Slipping, Gripping**

It's the first time House has dared to indulge. His head spins and his ears ring, but his thumb rests innocently against the red arrow pointing down, down to the darkness, down into the ground, down into the fires of Hell. He lets his rest there. He doesn't push it in, not yet. He waits. No pushing yet.

The man on the bed sleeps. He is dried out and silent, alone in this world, nameless as the discarded exoskeletons that blow down the sidewalks under the July sun.

"_Is it really that bad, House?"_

"_You're trading years for minutes every time you swallow."_

"_Just—just try it for another week..."_

The tendrils of resentment shoot up and wind their way around his ribcage so fast it almost chokes him. The thick, black cords squeeze and he can't breathe. His head spins. His ears ring.

He pushes his thumb down and watches the drip of morphine slow, slow, slow... Slow.

The man on the bed twitches in his sleep.

But soon, he will scream.

oOo

House used to watch the ER, when he was tired of pacing up and down the hallways. His personal porn theatre. He'd pull up a piss-yellow hospital chair, tear open a bag of peanut M&M's, and sit right next to the ambulance unloading bay, massaging away at his thigh as the mangled and screaming bodies were rushed past him. It made the oily tendrils around his lungs loosen, left him feeling cleansed even though the throbbing in his leg had not been abated. Friday nights were his favorite.

"Who are you hiding from?" Cameron once asked him, between patients.

Vicious, searing pain had torn down his femur.

"Wilson," House had answered.

Not lies. Not really.

But it was no longer effective, and so as codeine had become Vicodin, House had upped his prescription. This was a treatment plan that he was building a quick resistance to, and while he knew that level ground was waiting for him somewhere up there, he didn't like to think about it and focused on taking the smallest steps possible for now. He had to be careful. Tolerance was bad. That was why he had moved up—but only to pushing.

No more than once or twice a week. Post-op patients were the best.

oOo

His thigh is killing him. Cuddy's words are still buzzing about his ears.

_Do you want to die? _he silently asks the woman as she begins to come to consciousness.

She makes small noises in the back of her throat. It's perfect timing between the half-life of the anesthetic and the severing of the lifeline of morphine flowing into her veins.

_Do you feel like you might turn yourself inside out from pain?_

Her heart rate is increasing. He fingers the syringe in his hand.

_Why do you think your pain is justified?_

She twists, turns, the stitches on her stomach stretching and pulling at her ravaged skin. Her mouth opens and she cries out. Her heart rate speeds up and her breathing is faster, her eyes are beginning to flutter open, her hands are clenched into fists and a sheen of sweat has broken out on her forehead. The stitches are holding. She opens her eyes and goes rigid, all the blood gone from her face and her heart rate almost out of control. Her eyes are wild. They jump and twitch and dart and she can't seem to focus on anything.

Agony.

Their eyes meet. Sparks fly up inside of House's chest and the dark tendrils flee from the sudden warmth.

He is not alone because she feels the agony as he does, just in this moment. He's not alone.

In the beat of silence where the woman's scream travels from her heart to her lips, House stabs her with the sedative, and it never makes it all the way up her throat. It dies.

_Why do I have to justify my pain?_

oOo

Months go by. Kutner commits suicide, and House is forced to up his dosage.

oOo

"It could be sprained," House agrees, eying the swollen ankle being presented to him. He reaches out to take it, but the man jerks it away. Patience long gone, he scowls. "In order to figure out whether it's sprained, I'm going to have to _touch_ it. Suck it up."

The tentacles are already creeping out. He's in such a foul mood he barely notices. Who does this man think he is, whimpering about a sprained ankle that will heal in three days, that will make him limp but leave him with only residual pangs after downing Tylenol—an over-the-counter medication!—and will stop affecting his life after a week?

House seizes the man's foot and jerks it upwards, pleased with the cry of pain he gets from the man. How painful had that been? _A ten_, he thinks scornfully. This man will never know a ten. But House can give him an introduction.

He twists the foot in the other direction. The foot attempts to jerk backwards, and the man is swearing and his voice is cracking as he does so.

"Does that hurt?" House asks.

When he pushes the foot down, as far as he can make it go, the man is almost sobbing.

House wants to snap the foot off and show him the real meaning of pain, but instead he gives it a squeeze and lets it swing back. "Definitely sprained," he says cheerfully as he grabs his script pad.

It's a bad enough sprain that he should give the guy at least Tylenol-2.

It takes him a moment to decide whether he thinks the man deserves it.

oOo

He allows clinic patients to become his outlet and that works for a while. He uses them during the day and occasionally pushes at night, when he can't sleep and he knows that he can't take another Vicodin and he can't call Wilson. Part of him wants to worry that this is getting out of control, but it isn't. He knows exactly how much to give himself, and he has never once lost control of himself—he's taking this in small steps, as he should be. He's not worried about control. He has more control over this than he's ever had with the Vicodin.

No, what worries House is addiction. Addiction leads to loss of control, which would lead to bad, bad things. Arguably, worse than what would happen should he lose control of the Vicodin.

He's already walking the knife edge with the Vicodin. Dependency became addiction became overdose, and while he's using this new outlet as a crutch, he doesn't plan on following the same path.

Dependency. Not addiction.

And this is why he is able to rationally sit down, months later (ninety-seven days later), and decide that he needs to stop pushing so much, and that he needs to up his dosage. He weighs the pros and cons of his decision and makes mental lists and, with all the cold rationalization of a businessman, chooses to turn to his own patients. If he's subtle, this can work.

oOo

"I'll do the spinal tap," House says, and his ducklings look at him in confusion. He waves a hand. "Two of you go look at the house, and the third gets to run more gels. Go forth. Disperse."

They exchange looks. Foreman calls rights to running lab gels.

oOo

"EMG time!" House announces, wheeling in the cart. Foreman trails in after him, still looking peevish.

The patient looks up. "What?"

"We stick you with some needles and shock you a bit," House says, waving his hand. "Don't worry. No big deal. He's the neurologist so he should technically be doing this, but he's in the doghouse at the moment, so he's just going to watch the readout."

The patient stares.

House is almost whistling as he takes out the needles.

oOo

He's waiting. He knew when he took this case that this would come, and now he's presented all the evidence his ducklings should need to put it together. His heart pounds as he waits, hopes that he's trained them well enough, and his lungs seize. They are filled with tar. He's still waiting.

"It's bone cancer!" Taub blurts out with wide eyes.

Rushing relief.

He counts to ten before he can no longer hold back.

"Which means?"

Taub opens his mouth, but Thirteen beats him to it. "Bone marrow biopsy," she says. Her eyes are the color of a dead raccoon on the side of the road.

_That's my girl_.

oOo

House hands over the slip of paper. The girl, too young to be wearing the white jacket, takes it from him and hands it to the real pharmacist, who is standing by the shelves in the back. House scans her badge. It's some intern program, she's a sophomore in college. She smiles at him, and her teeth are startling against her tanned skin.

From the back, the pharmacist is counting out the pills, but his eyes are on House. He says nothing, but his eyes are accusing.

_Addict._

House wants to gouge them out.

oOo

Foreman sighs heavily as he hands over the lab report.

House takes it, his eyes scanning. This is a twist that he hadn't seen coming—he thought that this would be Addison's disease, plain and simple, but things were veering off course and headed in a wildly fantastic new direction.

"We're going to have to do the biopsy without anesthesia," Foreman says grimly.

Blood gushes into House's mouth as he tears at the delicate skin on the inside of his cheeks. He takes three breaths before he swallows and speaks.

"I know."

As soon as Foreman leaves to tell the patient, House loses control and the grin breaks out on his face.

oOo

Little Sammy moans, twisting and pushing himself up and then curling in on himself, hands diving into his hair and tugging, tears running down his face. The mother tries to soothe him, pats his forehead with a wet towel and squeezes his hand. She is near tears herself.

"Please," she begs, turning her shining eyes to House. "Can't you give him something?"

House shakes his head. He pitches his voice low so that it sounds more sympathetic. "We need to monitor his pain levels accurately. I'm sorry."

She turns back to her son, desperately grabbing his hand and squeezing it. "How much longer?"

"If it doesn't get better by the morning, we'll give him something," House promises.

"All _night?_" she chokes out desperate.

"I'm sorry," House repeats.

Little Sammy writhes, his whimpers becoming cries.

House's grip is tight, tighter, tightest on his cane. Something is dancing in his stomach and the pain in his thigh is magnified a thousand times but he doesn't care. Why should he suffer alone? Why should he be judged when they have no idea what he goes through? He wishes the world were on fire, even if it meant he would burn to death with them all. He wishes—

"House."

The voice is a blow dart that sticks between his ribs.

Chase stands in the doorway of the boy's room, his eyes locked onto House's. "You're out of control."

House's lips curl. "Get back to surgery."

"I've been watching you," Chase says, every word lancing right through House's chest. "I've been silent for months. You're losing control and you need help."

"Who is this?" the mother asks tearfully. "Dr. House?"

"You know nothing," House snarls. His vision tunnels in on Chase as the room around him darkens. All he can feel is the beating of his heart in his throat. The world is doing a tailspin, a nosedive, and the hot cords around his lungs are tightening like coiling snakes.

"I'll help you."

"I don't need help."

Little Sammy's cries are escalating into screams. His mother sobs.

"Sedate him," Chase says, eyes penetrating House's.

His lungs seize. He chokes. "I can't."

"Sedate him," Chase repeats.

The world closes in around him. "I ca—"

"Sedate him _now_."

He stumbles through his world, blind and striving to expand his lungs, and his fingers seek out the right syringe. His mind trudges behind his fingers, seeing their movements five seconds after the fact and not connecting it to the sensory impulses that are shooting up from the nerve endings in the pads of his fingers. Everything is blurry and far away. The syringe in his hand is cool and smooth. Muscle memory is such a powerful thing.

The screams quiet.

House surfaces, his lungs expanding painfully and his vision returning in over-saturated colors. He leans heavily on the bed, taking his eyes away from the mother and moving them to Chase, who is still standing in the doorway. He feels dizzy. How is he not throwing up? Some strange mixture of fear and confusion are spinning around his chest, but mostly he's just dizzy.

"Follow me," Chase says, and House obeys. Chase's voice makes the world a little steadier, like he knows how to hold everything still.

Somewhere, in the clearing mist, he feels hot anger beginning to flare up, and the tentacles are starting to wind their way around his chest again. He wants to shout at Chase, but he doesn't think that he'd know any words if he were to open his mouth. Chase knows what he's been doing, but there had been no judgment in his eyes, no accusations in his tone. Just anger. And House doesn't know what to think about that, so he keeps his mouth shut and follows.

Chase steers him into an empty on-call room, standing him in front of the end of one of the bunk beds. "Give me your cane."

The flames of anger are beginning to burn away the mist and gaining strength.

"Why?" he asks.

"Because you need help," Chase answers, holding out his hand. "I'm going to give it to you."

"What are you going to do?"

"House, you just tortured a little boy. You _tortured_ him, because it made you happy. Give me your fucking cane."

Somewhere, House feels a twist of guilt and he hands his cane over. The tendrils of resentment are beginning to come alive again but this time they're going for his heart. He can feel them twisting and criss-crossing over it, tightening like a noose and making every heart beat like a stab to the chest. Heart attack. The world goes dark and his hands grip the bunk—the pain in his thigh is a distant throbbing, like a lighthouse too many miles away, and he's drowning, drowning, drowning...

_Thwap!_

Sharp, clear pain bursts into his mind and for a split second he's free.

House grips the metal in his palms, twisting and clenching as the tendrils instantly retake their hold. He feels nothing but burning, suffocating hatred. He's dying. How is he standing? How is his body still in one piece?

_Thwap!_

Pain shoots up and down his rear end, down into the very bones of his hips, and he gets a second's reprieve before he's fighting it again. A second of agony, strangling, breathless agony, and then there's another explosion of pain and he's knocked senseless. Barely a second's pause this time and—_thwap! Thwap! Thwap! _His mind is reeling in pain. More blows rain down on him and the tentacles, while far from a distant memory, have met their match. He's no longer sure which is worse—the bone-shaking waves of pain coming from his own cane or the inky cords that are keeping his heart from beating, his lungs from breathing, the scream from leaving.

"Do you like torturing people, House?"

Chase is merciless. House can't surface long enough to shake his head—it's taking all he has in him to grip the metal of the bunk bed so he won't fall to the ground. He knows from experience that his leg won't handle it well. Although it might be less pain that he's currently in.

"Do you think they deserve it? What did that kid do to deserve this?"

The tendrils are snaking up into his throat, hot and slick, and House gags. He spits. He's crying.

"It's wrong, House."

The next blow lands in an old spot. He sees white. His mouth opens to bellow—

"It's wrong."

_Thwap!_

His body sings.

"Whoa!" he hears Chase mutter, and someone catches him around the middle before he even knows that he's falling. Someone has pumped his body full of helium and he's whizzing upwards, wind in his ears, his body gone weightless. The tentacles are gone—not just curled in the pit of his stomach, but gone. His leg feels like it doesn't even exist. He thinks he might have died and gone to heaven.

"Not dead yet, no," Chase says, with a hint of amusement.

House hadn't realized that he'd said it aloud.

He's dimly aware of the fact that he's being laid down on a bed, and his mind attempts to logic out why he's feeling as he does, but this is even more intense than LSD. His mind can't function through all this bliss. How long will it last? He could live like this forever. Forget heaven. Bye-bye heaven, bye-bye tentacles.

"You're flying." Chase's voice appears like crystallized breath on a January morning. "It might last a while. We should talk, when you come back down."

House soars.

oOo

"What about Cameron?" House asks, swallowing a potato chip.

Chase hardens. "She stays out of this. Completely. She doesn't know and she doesn't need to, and if you say one word to her, I _will_ hurt you."

"That's nice," House says. "I was actually going to ask whether or not she knew about this interesting facet of your personality, but I guess you answered that anyway."

Chase says nothing, his eyes shifting. He's embarrassed.

"This isn't going to bring up weird fidelity issues, is it?" House asks.

"No." Chase snorts, now. "Believe me, that _last_ thing this is about is love."

"What are you getting out of this, then?"

Chase says something too quickly, his eyes focused on the wall behind House, and House doesn't ask again.

oOo

If pushing post-ops and torturing his patients were his codeine and Vicodin, then Chase is his Ketamine. Now, instead of merely placating the tendrils lurking in the pit of his stomach, he banishes them for days. They don't come creeping back at every off-kilter glance and every eye that passes over his pill bottle. He can talk to Wilson again—laugh, even. And the hours of freedom from the throbbing of his leg put him into good moods that have Cuddy interrogating him to find out which of his hapless ducklings he's banging.

The irony is almost too delightful for House to stand.

oOo

House staggers into the Skills Lab, one hand white on his cane and the other waving wildly for something to grip for support. His vision is shaking and his hands are fading as it consumes him. Dark tentacles are reaching upwards and hooking to his bottommost ribs, tugging him _down_.

Chase looks up from the plastic body he's dismantling, healing, something. "House?"

House takes a lurching step forward. It's been almost two weeks.

Chase takes his hands out of the plastic cavity, ungloved and unbloodied, and moves to put the organs back in place.

"One moment," he promises.

House grits his teeth. "Now."

"House."

"Now!"

oOo

It isn't that he's a masochist. He's lived with his leg too long for that to ever be true. But when the pain is a means to an end, he can certainly deal with it.

He only misses torturing patients a little bit.

oOo

Wilson stares up at him from his seat behind the desk. House hates that desk. He hates the way that Wilson hides behind it, draws power from it, attacks without ever daring to leave its safety. He hates this desk every week. Sometimes twice a week.

With a sigh, Wilson pulls out his prescription pad from his drawer and begins to fill it out.

House stands there, vulnerable, his eyes shifting around the room. He hates this room.

Wilson's pen doesn't scratch as he writes. He has an expensive, golden pen with his name inscribed on the side in silver lettering, probably from a dead person, and the pen moves soundlessly across the paper. Money buys silence.

As Wilson signs off on the bottom, House holds out a hand. He needs to get out of this room. He can't breathe.

"Try to make it a week and a half, this time?" Wilson asks, voice despairing.

House grits his teeth, but it's too late. The tendrils are rising up like wisps of smoke, solidifying, pushing and tangling their way into his ribcage—he stumbles backwards—

A dark explosion of pain and he only just holds back a scream. It's a new kind of pain, in a different location resonating through different parts of his body, and as he grits his teeth he relishes this moment of silence from his leg. As he sucks in a careful breath of air, not wanting to betray too much of himself to Wilson, he realizes that the tendrils have gone. He's free.

"I always try," House tells Wilson, taking the scrip with a grin. He's not flying, but he's happy.

Wilson rolls his eyes.

And if House feels another flare of anger, he just casually bumps his side against the door frame on his way out, and it's gone.

He's used gating mechanisms before. They've just never been this readily available.

oOo

He is weightless, thoughtless, careless. It's a natural high, an experience shadowed by a memory of crossing a finish line of red tape

"I was fast," he says, because Chase is still there. Chase stays with him when he's like this to make sure he's okay, which is weird, because Chase doesn't actually care about him. "Doing his job," he says, now not speaking to Chase. "Professional detachment, it's going to the dogs. Wilson saves them. He saved Hector. We would have played good poker games, but he was too old to keep."

There's a soft laugh. "Yeah?"

House smiles because he has the secrets, secrets Chase will never know. Chase has no idea. But Chase is nice. Chase has professional detachment, he has all sorts of detachments, and House likes that about him.

The high is fading. There's so much more he wants to say.

"Wilson had a wet dream about you once."

It was supposed to be a secret. But now it's a lie.

oOo

Chase holds out his hand, but House hands him something new. Shiny-shiny. Sharp.

"What is this?" Chase asks slowly.

"Scalpel," House says brightly. "Just out of the autoclave."

Chase studies it for a moment, and then shakes his head. "No. Give me your cane."

"I want this," House says stubbornly. He looks at it. Shiny-shiny.

"Why?"

"It's shiny."

"House."

His eyes shift away. He wonders what Chase will do if he doesn't answer.

"Give me your cane," Chase says again.

House obeys, but only because it gets him out of the question.

oOo

He tests to see if maybe Chase is reluctant to take suggestions from other people, and simultaneously if the cane is the only area that Chase has any skill in.

He regrets this.

House struggles to keep the noises he's making behind his clenched teeth, to stop them in his throat before they can develop into an actual sound, as Chase snaps the belt against the bare soles of his feet again and again. It had started off as an almost pleasant burn but it had quickly escalated into his feet being on _fire_. House is half convinced that Chase needs to tie his legs down in case he loses control and yanks his feet away, like he so desperately wants to do. At the end of the table, Chase is moving rapidly between each foot, cracking the belt tirelessly.

House bites down on his tongue and squeezes his eyes shut, the delicate capillaries in the soles of his feet humming and vibrating like they're about to burst open at any second. He holds in a moan, resisting the urge to curl his toes. Fire, fire, fire...

Then the belt stops, but his feet continue to burn unbearably.

"Ready for some real pain?" Chase asks.

"Real pain?" House repeats faintly.

He opens his eyes to see that Chase is now gripping the end of the belt with the buckle. His stomach drops.

"Which foot?" Chase asks.

House is still struggling to speak, for his mouth is too dry.

"Walking's going to be a bitch for a while," Chase adds helpfully.

oOo

"Why?" Chase asks him again, and House hates him.

"Why not?" he shoots back.

Chase exhales, eyes on the scalpel that House is twirling between his fingers. He holds out a hand, wrist facing upward, and House can see delicate blue veins snaking from his forearm all the way up to his fingertips. Too pale. He wonders if Chase used to be tan, when he lived in Australia.

"Do I win?" House asks, shaking the thoughts away.

Chase looks at him, then puts his right hand on the table, spreading his fingers far apart. He holds the scalpel inches above the gap between his thumb and finger, grin dangerous on his face. "You ever play this game?"

oOo

House remembers pushing.

"I could do it,' he tells the woman. She's middle-aged, her haircut is expensive and her face is stupid. It smiles, even though she sleeps. "I could do it and you'd never remember it."

These are the women he hates. They eat frozen yogurt and gossip at the gym and leave the keys to the liquor cabinet on the stereo in an attempt to be the 'cool mom'. Silly, stupid little women. They've spent their whole lives in a cloud of money and make-up, and will probably never know anything else. House thinks that this is probably what Chase's mother was like, at some time.

He can smell the self-righteousness coming off of this woman like perfume. Or maybe it's just the Botox.

His thumb lingers on the down button of her morphine drip, but he doesn't push. He stands there and remembers.

He remembers enjoying their pain.

But now he has Chase.

oOo

His team has been avoiding him—they think his leg's having a bad day, so they've all busied themselves in other departments and House is left alone in his office for the better part of the day. Even Wilson stays away. House's leg is bad, but it was worse this morning and thanks to Chase, all he needs to do now is stomp his foot on the ground and the pain vanishes for a bit. He thinks about paging Chase, except he's got things under control, and if he doesn't need Chase for his leg then what does he need him for?

oOo

"Do you want to know why I won't use the scalpel?" Chase finally asks, a week later.

House doesn't even dignify that with an answer.

Chase sighs. He pops a tomato in his mouth.

"Do you suck at it or something?" House asks, even though he _knows_ that between Chase's general kink knowledge and his surgical training, Chase would be nothing short of a master with a blade.

"House, if I cut you," Chase finally says, looking him in the eye, "what would you do after?"

"Fly?"

"When you're trying to calm yourself down. Now, you just knock into something and that's reminder enough. With cuts? You'd be splitting them back open, peeling them apart and maybe ripping a little farther, until they get infected and you end up scarred. You'd start turning to the blade instead of coming to me."

"Speaking from experience?" House asks.

Chase is digging around his salad now. "You'll get bruises and welts from me, but I don't do blood. Period."

House swallows the joke in his throat and is about to look down at his own lunch with he sees Cameron staring at them from across the cafeteria. She turns to leave the moment they lock eyes.

Chase either doesn't notice or doesn't care.

oOo

It comes down hard and House grunts before he can stop himself. He's shaking everywhere, sweat dripping off of his face, and he can barely see his hands gripping the back of the chair through his pain-induced haze. What little he might be able to see is obscured by the fury pounding inside of him. Fuck, fuck, _fuck._

"Do you want to torture people, House?" Chase asks.

House wants to hurt someone so badly that his ears ring with the effort of keeping it suppressed.

There's another blow of pain and he can't breathe.

"Your latest patient, is that what did it? The old man, Simon?"

Jealousy is a powerful thing. House's obituary will never say that he led a long, healthy life.

"Tell me what you wanted to do to him," Chase says, as he brings down the cane for another hit. "Did you want to kill him? Did you want to watch him bleed to death?"

House lets out a growl through his teeth and slams the chair down into the ground, longing to let the words spill over. He wanted to crush the old man, smash his hollow bones and run a knife through those runny eyes, drag it around like a fork in an egg yolk. He wanted to pull on the papery skin until it tore open. He wanted to watch the old man twitch, weakly rasping in pain, and see every unappreciated drop of life run out of him. He resisted but he'd wanted—he still wants—

"Did you hate him?" Chase asks.

The cane swings down.

"Yes!" House screams, his world exploding in pain. His mouth is open an he can no longer hold back. "He was the most ungrateful bastard I've ever met and I hated him, I hated him, and I hate him because he's still alive and ungrateful. Fucking _bastard!_" he yells, hands wringing the metal chair, and when the cane lands on the same spot twice he unleashes the most primal scream he has. It almost sends him to the floor.

oOo

When House looks up, he sees Cuddy in the doorway of his office. She's just standing there, leaning against the glass, wearing a flowing red skirt that goes gown to her ankles and a loose brown top. House considers commenting that this is the first time he's seen her in clothing that's actually the right size for her, but instead he goes back to the form he's filling out. He's actually doing paperwork. The lady down in Purchasing can be very terrifying.

Name, date. Name, date. Name, date. Initial.

When he looks up, Cuddy hasn't left. She's still standing in the doorway, smiling.

"I thought you were better at stalking than this," he comments.

She takes a step inside. "Wilson says that you've been cutting back on your Vicodin. He says your leg seems to be hurting less."

House raises his eyebrows, because he's not quite sure what to say. It's a better story than the truth.

Cuddy smiles. "I'm happy for you."

House stares at her for a moment, startled, then he awkwardly nods his head. "Thanks."

She gives him one more little smile, and for once, this isn't her manipulating him. She doesn't think that he's got another scheme going. She isn't taking advantage of this moment between them. She is sincerely and genuinely happy for him.

House feels funny.

oOo

He finds Chase talking to Cameron, both of them wearing gowns and gloves, amidst a crowd of doctors similarly dressed. Chase sees House, says something to Cameron (who glances over to House as though he's a rat infestation she thought she'd already taken care of), then touches her arm and leaves. House ignores the dirty look Cameron shoots him when Chase has his back turned. Boss and wife are both four-letter words.

"You summoned?" House asks, as Chase approaches.

Chase grins. "There was a massive train wreck, bodies are going to start coming in about ten minutes."

"And… you need some moral support? A devil to argue with the angel on your shoulder?"

"Nope."

"Then what—"

Chase begins pushing him towards the yellow chairs near that unloading bay. "Sit down. Watch. Enjoy."

House raises an eyebrow. "Enjoy?"

Chase pats the back of one of the chairs, grinning widely.

"Happy birthday, House."

oOo

Clinic duty doesn't usually doesn't do him in, but he spent last night standing over his patient in the OR and the pain in his leg had turned even the most laughable clinic patient into a teeth-grinding nightmare. As soon as the three hours of torture are up, House goes in search of Chase and finds him in one of the surgical labs.

"Hey you," he grunts, limping in. The bottle of Vicodin is heavy in his pocket, but he's resisting the urge to take one. Once Chase does his thing, he won't need it for at least twelve hours.

Chase glances up, snapping the cap on a miniature tube. "Need help?"

"Yes," House says through gritted teeth. "Now would be nice."

"Let me get this in the centrifuge—it's got to spin for twenty minutes anyway," Chase says. He's filling a balancing tube with water.

"Now," House bites out.

Chase slowly looks up at him, eyebrows slightly raised.

House grits his teeth and leans against the lab bench, waiting as Chase loads the tubes, adjusts the speed, and then sets the timer.

oOo

Wilson, the coward, leaves the papers on House's desk.

"I'm not doing it," House says flatly, barging into Wilson's office with the papers clutched in his hand.

"Not doing what?" Wilson asks innocently, from behind his desk.

House hates that desk.

"I'm not trying it again." He slaps the papers onto Wilson's desk. "Forget it."

"If you really wanted to forget about it, you would have just shredded the papers and never brought it up," Wilson points out mildly.

House scowls. "Wrong. I, unlike you, am in possession of a pair of _balls_ and can actually confront people about things of note."

"You confront people about things even when they're not of note," Wilson mutters, but his eyes are on his desk. House is right. "Will you give it more than a second's consideration? Please?"

"I tried the Ketamine. It doesn't work. I'm not interested."

"House, c'mon," Wilson says in his Best Buddy voice, which House hates almost as much as Wilson's desk. "Why not?"

"Drop it," House says tersely.

"No."

"Wilson."

Wilson glares at him from behind his desk.

House scowls, and then tendrils begin to rise in the bottom of his stomach.

oOo

"Hm."

"That's it?" House demands. "Hm?"

"Are you asking for my opinion?" Chase asks.

He's being deliberately difficult. House should be proud, really.

"Yes," House says stiffly.

"I don't think it's my place," Chase tells him.

"What, you're only good for beating the shit out of people?"

"House, you never take anyone's advice anyway," Chase says, now sounding annoyed, "Do you need me to help you or not?"

"No," House mutters. He's sulky, now, almost enough that the tendrils that were squeezing at his ribcage have gone away.

Chase has learned too much from him.

oOo

"Tell me what you wanted to do," Chase orders.

House clenches his hands around the metal poles of the bunks, gritting his teeth. "I wanted to break her arm. It was so—fucking—_delicate_."

The cane comes down hard and fast, hitting the backs of his thighs and making him jerk forward, almost losing his balance with the blow and the pain that resonates deep within his bones. It's new pain, a fresh pain, and he relishes the change.

"What'd she do to deserve it?"

"Rolled her eyes," House pants. He squeezes his eyes shut against the sweat trickling down from his forehead. "Thought pain meds were for weak people. She likes to know how much pain she's in, she says."

_Thwap!_

"You tell her how much pain you were in?"

"No. She doesn't—she has no idea... Only paper cuts. Spoiled little bitch."

_Thwap! _

House lets out a low, keening sound as the top half strikes just under a forming bruise. He might fall over if Chase doesn't push him over soon.

"Chase..." he chokes out.

It's the only signal Chase needs.

oOo

Dibala arrives.

House begs. He pleads. He practically _grovels_ for the chance to torture him, to just push him for a few seconds, and after several conversations Chase finally agrees to talk to Dibala. House waits. Impatiently. It takes everything he has in him not to bug Chase every time he sees him.

So House waits. And waits.

And then Dibala is dead.

oOo

Chase is spinning that red ball between his fingers.

"You killed him," House says.

The ball stops.

"I'm sorry," Chase says quietly.

House had _wanted_ him. He had wanted Dibala so bad that his leg had ached and his stomach had been jumping all day long, and Chase had taken that away from him. It wasn't fair. It wasn't fair, and he knew it, and dark tendrils were rising up and snagging the delicate vessels going in and out of his heart, squeezing with warning. With reminder.

"Why didn't you let me have him?" House asks. He hates how desperate he sounds.

"No one deserves to be tortured," Chase answers, but he's still not looking at House.

"But he deserved to die?"

Chase doesn't answer that.

"I need your help," House says as the tendrils rise up, winding their way around his lungs. He hates, he hates, he hates.

But Chase shakes his head, still not looking at him.

"Chase," House says. "I need your help. Don't pussy out on my here."

"I can't," Chase says quietly. "Not now. Not anymore. This isn't working for me, and I need to stop."

House can't breathe. "What?"

"It was never meant to work, House," Chase tells him quietly.

"Why are you backing out now?" House demands, though his lungs are burning and his ribcage is being crushed. "It's working. I can't—"

His windpipe feels as though it's being _crushed_. He sees white spots.

"Whether you want to be in charge or not," Chase sighs, "you are and you always will be."

The ball stops again. Chase sets it on the desk and pushes himself out of the chair, making his way around the desk and out of the room.

House stumbles, hitting the desk and grasping it with two hands. His cane falls to the floor. He's in charge—does that mean that this is his fault, for not submitting enough? What did he do wrong? Why is Chase abandoning him?

oOo

He holds out that night. Everything in him is exploding but he waits, because he has faith that in the morning Chase will come in and last night's conversation will have been forgotten. Chase is just being stupid. He'll come around, and House isn't going to ruin everything by being impatient. He can bear this for a while longer, until Chase comes around, because when Chase realizes that he's wrong it'll all be worth it. He needs Chase. He has faith in Chase.

oOo

"Chase…"

"I said I'm done, House. Drop it."

"Chase, please. Pretty please, with sugar on top."

Chase breaks into a run.

House watches him leave. The fury is burning in him, white hot, and he can barely see. He can barely breathe. He wants to make people _scream_.

But he'll wait. He'll wait for Chase.

oOo

On the fourth night, he breaks.

oOo

He picks a woman. A frail, sagging old woman who looks like she's spent her entire life nagging after one person or another—she's in for a hip replacement, and while it's not idea it's close enough. She's old enough that if House pushes her for too long, she may die, but it's a risk he's willing to take. Who would miss her?

Instead of pushing down the morphine drip, House intervenes directly. His thumb and forefinger pinch the drip line and he holds there, watching the old woman's face. She is old. It won't be long.

The pain reaches her face before consciousness does. The lines on her face tighten, the pale and veined skin tensing as though fibers of collagen lost twenty years ago are slowly being pumped in again. Her eyes squeeze shut a little. Feeble cries begin to emerge from her lips.

House watches, fascinated. He will never live to be as old as this woman. What is it like to feel pain when your body is this degenerate already?

She whimpers, twisting, stiffening. The heart monitor is beginning to beep faster, but not fast enough to alert the doctor on call. This is Chase's specialty. He wishes that Chase were working the ICU tonight because then if the doctor on call came running in, it would be Chase and House wouldn't have to explain himself. He could just keep going, and keep going, and keep going, because Chase doesn't care anymore.

Her eyes are beginning to twitch and House knows that she's going to wake soon.

His chest tightens and his heart begins to pound. He hasn't pushed in so long.

The old woman's hands are gripping the sides of her gurney, the fragile bones almost visible through her translucent skin.

The tendrils are tightening, pulsing with excitement.

She turns her head, moaning.

House can almost breathe.

Her eyes open.

The connection shoots straight down into his heart, hitting it like a bolt of electricity and he feels _alive_. The woman gets louder and louder in her pain and House can feel his own power rising, rising up from deep within the pit of his stomach, coming up, up, up into his chest and up his throat. She's in pain. She feels his pain, and she understands him. He is not alone. This woman is here with him, clinging to a thread of life because of _him_, because he's here to keep her alive, and he will—

The almost-scream startles him out of his head, and he quickly loosens his fingers around the IV—not so much that it will all rush into her at once, because that might kill her right now, but enough that it starts to drip through again.

Morphine is one of the fastest drugs House has ever seen.

When the woman is quiet and asleep again, his attention wanders to the man on the gurney next to her. It looks like he's had some kind of orthopedic surgery.

This man is going to be in pain for months, House knows. Why not give him an introduction to it now?

oOo

"Cut the pain meds," House announces, and watches as four heads jerk up.

"What?" Foreman says.

"House, that's insane!" Cameron cries.

"Symptoms fit an allergic reaction, she's been on morphine ever since she was admitted. The symptoms appear when she was admitted," House says. He explains himself with logic and reason, but the only things in his mind right now are dark, rolling clouds of hatred. He fixes his gaze on Chase. "We have to cut her pain meds to see if that's what's causing her symptoms."

"No," Chase says flatly.

"House, she has a broken arm and she just had surgery for internal bleeding yesterday," Cameron says desperately. "If she gets too stressed—"

"She'll handle it," House interrupts. People handle intense pain all the time.

"House, this is unreasonable," Chase says with a note of warning in his voice.

_So stop me._

"Who's in charge here?" he asks pointedly.

Chase's eyes lower to the table, but he's clearly still fighting the urge to argue.

"Go do it," he orders.

Foreman and Chase both get up to leave, while Cameron sits at the table in steadfast but useless protest. House watches Chase's retreating back.

oOo

"House, I thought your leg was getting better," Wilson says pleadingly.

House wants to burn his desk down. There are lighters in the labs for the ethanol burners.

"My leg is never going to get _better_," he says through clenched teeth. "I will be in pain until I die."

"It doesn't have to be that way," Wilson says. "If you would just give the Ketamine another go—"

"No! I'm not doing the fucking _Ketamine!_"

Wilson stands up. He's leaving the desk—what a big boy he's become. "Why not?"

"Because it didn't work the last time, and I don't want to go through it again," House says, and he's being honest because he'd say anything right now just to shut Wilson up.

"You're a coward," Wilson hisses.

House can see it in his eyes. Wilson truly believes he's a coward.

In that second his control shatters, and by the time he manages to pull it back together Wilson is against the wall, hand over the right side of his face, and he's staring at House in shock.

House leaves the office before he gives into the urge to make Wilson scream, too.

oOo

The man has no face, but there is blood. A bloody thigh.

House crouches down above the man's naked form, jackknife in hand. "Does it hurt?"

The man makes a noise. There's a gag in his mouth and he's biting down hard, glaring at House

House is in control.

He puts down the jackknife and looks down into the pool of blood that has gathered in the crater of the man's thigh. Ants would drown little bloody deaths in there.

Feeling the elation of power rise up into his ribcage, House dips his finger into the pool, trying to find out how deep it is. Would dragonflies drown in it, too? Tarantulas? Down, down, down his finger goes until he hits tissue, but he's not sure that it's tissue so he pushes down hard.

The man screams through the gag, thrashing his hands and struggling against his bonds.

House reaches for the jackknife, a smile on his face.

oOo

The dream frightens him a little when he thinks about it, and so he doesn't. Weeks have passed since Chase quit on him and he still doesn't feel right. He hasn't felt that peace—the floating, thoughtless rush of joy he gets from flying—in ages and sometimes at night he lays there and tries to imagine it back into existence. It never works.

But then he remembers what Chase had said about knives.

oOo

It's the jackknife from his dream, only colder in the palm of his hand. He opens and closes it as he thinks. He wants to cut some place painful, some place that won't be obvious, but a place that if someone were looking... Because Chase deserves to see what he's done. But House also wants it in a place that he can reach, because Chase had a pretty good idea when he'd talked about opening and reopening old cuts. Shiny-shiny. Shiny-sharp.

Can he make himself fly with blood?

He opens the knife again, staring at the blade.

Where should he cut? How deep? Should he start it deep and then let the blade come up, or should he start by first breaking the skin and then plunging deeper? For how long should he allow it to bleed? Should he wait until he's home?

"I'll take that," an accented voice says, every syllable tight, and before House can even understand what he's doing he's setting the jackknife into the waiting palm in front of him.

Then it's gone and House realizes what he's just done.

"Give it back," he says immediately, reaching, but Chase is too far away.

Chase is also slightly amused. "You just gave it to me."

"And now I want it back," House says stubbornly, scowling at him. He feels the urge to cross his arms and stick out his tongue, because Chase has closed the jackknife and is holding it securely in his fist, and he knows that he's not going to get it back.

"I told you, no blood."

"You gonna spank me?" House asks.

Chase's eyes are dark, and he doesn't answer before he leaves.

House watches him go, frustration building inside of him. If he can't cut, what's he supposed to do?

oOo

"You're got to stop stealing things from your daughter's closet," is House's greeting as Cuddy strides in.

Cuddy sighs. "House."

"I have a patient, and I have my minions working on it."

"You also have clinic duty," she reminds him.

House really, really doesn't want to deal with clinic people today. The reassurance of his outlet being there at the end of it all has disappeared, and he hates it anyway.

"You'll do it, or I'll revoke your parking pass for a month and you'll ride the bus in every day," Cuddy says, sharp as her shoes. "And don't try to play the leg card on me. It can't get better and then conveniently worse again when you have clinic duty to do."

The sincerity might as well have never been there at all.

oOo

Talking to Cameron is difficult, now, but especially this time. House wonders how much she knows and how much is just a tendency to say uncanny truths, born from years of stating trite things until she hit upon something.

"Motives do matter," she says. "Lives can't come in second."

"The patient is alive—that's what matters," House tells her.

Cameron shakes her head. "Not to you. All you care about is that Taub and Thirteen fell for your game. You'll poison them just like you poisoned Chase."

Did Chase tell her? Did she figure it out on her own?

"Your husband killed a patient and you're breaking up with me?" House asks, after he swallows.

"You ruined him so he can't see right from wrong, can't even see the sanctity of human life anymore," Cameron accuses, tears coming to her eyes. "I loved you, and I loved Chase. I'm sorry for you both, for what you've become, because there's no way back for either of you."

House wonders if she might be right.

Cameron weeps.

oOo

Knock-knock goes the door.

"Yo!" House calls.

Knock-knock replies the door, a moment later.

If it's Wilson, House is going to make it so that he has a matching set of black eyes. Snake eyes. Maybe Wilson would fly off to Vegas and never come back.

But when he opens the door, it isn't Wilson. It's Chase.

"She's gone," he says.

House steps back and lets Chase in. He's a little tingly. Does Chase need someone to work his anger out on? Is the hiatus over? It could be. He decides to let Chase do his thing until it becomes clear whether or not House is going to get a beating out of this—and apparently, Chase's thing is to pace the floor of House's living room with vigor.

Quietly shutting the door, House clears his throat.

Chase pauses, looking up. "She told you, didn't she? She told you before she told me?"

House nods.

The pacing resumes.

"I'm not going to tell you what she told me," House tells him, though Chase's eyes are glued to the floor as he walks and he looks as though he's doing some very furious thinking. "Private conversation. Employee confidentiality or something."

"She married me!" Chase bursts out, stopping again.

House gets a glimpse of his eyes. Normally, he has to visit the psych ward to feel like the saner person in the room.

"She married me," Chase repeats. "She fixes broken people, but apparently a murderer was too broken for her. I thought that she would stay, and she left. She left."

House's eyes narrow. "You killed Dibala because you were trying to save your marriage?"

"You know, I don't think she loved me," Chase says, a little wonderingly. "Ever. I pressured her into the whole thing—it was all me."

"She could have said no," House points out.

Chase meets his eyes. "She's gone, House. She left me."

"I know."

"I—oh God—" Chase slips, almost losing his footing, but he's got it back in seconds.

"Are you going to go after her?" House asks, even though he doesn't think Chase is that pathetic.

"Do you know why I killed Dibala?" Chase asks.

"I have wildly theatrical ideas that I'm thinking of selling to MGM," House answers. "And if that doesn't go through, the Russian mob."

Chase is too far into his head to appreciate the joke, which is fortunate, because it wasn't very good.

"I killed Dibala because of you," he says, point-blank.

_Oh, you shouldn't have_.

"Why?" House says out loud.

Chase's jaw is taut, and then he whirls and he's pacing again. "You're not the only one who gets angry, you know. You think there aren't things in my life that piss me off? Do you think I never get the urge to just let some of my patients die? Everyone feels like that. The two of us, we're just too—too _weak_ to deal with it."

"I am not weak," House bites out, white-hot fury shooting through him as Wilson flashes in his mind. "You be as weak as you fucking want, but I'm not fucking _weak_."

"I thought it would help," Chase says anxiously, his eyes seeking House's for affirmation, for forgiveness. "I thought that if I killed him, I'd feel whatever ecstasy you feel when you watch people in pain, I thought that I could have it too, but it didn't work. I was too _weak_."

House's emotion are spun full-circle. "It's not about being—"

"Is that why Cameron left?" Chase runs a hand through his hair, swallowing. "Am I not strong enough? Did she know that I—that you—"

His voice cracks and he stops. He stops everything. His eyes are fixed on House's, hanging, clinging, waiting for the answers that he so desperately needs. Cameron is gone and with her is any token of self-confidence that Chase had managed to acquire in his years at PPTH.

House's throat is closed up. He's weak. That's the truth of it, isn't it?

"I can't feel like this," Chase whispers, his eyes shining. "Please. Please, House, let me feel what you feel."

"What?" House chokes out.

Chase seizes House's cane from the coffee table, thrusting it forward. The tears spill over. "Hit me. Hit me like I hit you, make me feel strong again. Isn't that what I do for you?"

House staggers back, everything about hitting Chase feeling _wrong_. "No. No, no way, Chase."

"House, you don't understand," Chase pleads. "I can't _breathe_. I can't _think_. I'm weak and I deserve to be in pain, please, please just—"

He's pushing the cane at House, breathing jaggedly. His eyes are electric.

"I'm not doing this," House says shakily.

Chase drops to his knees, bowing his head and holding the cane up to House with two hands.

House stumbles back into the wall, so repulsed is he. "Get up."

Chase's hands clench into fists around the cane, but he doesn't look up. "Hurt me."

"No."

"I'll do it myself," Chase threatens.

Swallowing the bile in his throat, House takes a step forward. He has to do something.

Chase, seeing his step even though his head is bowed, immediately unclenches his hands and goes silent. He's trembling, tears falling in little spatters to the floor, and he's trying to keep his breathing steady.

House grabs his cane, stares down at Chase for a moment, and then grabs him by the wrist and hauls him up.

"Up against the wall?" Chase asks, eyes darting around the room. "The couch? Tell me where, House, just tell me."

House shoves him toward the couch. "I'm not going to hurt you."

"What? No, no—House, c'mon, you like hurting people. Why won't you do it to me? Am I not special enough? Am I too weak for you, too?"

"Sit down and shut up," House mutters, because he doesn't know what to do with the words coming out of Chase's mouth. He _should_ want to hurt Chase. He likes hurting people, even Wilson and Cuddy and they're probably his two closest friends. Chase isn't even that. Why can't he do it? Why does the idea of punishing Chase make him stop breathing?

"One way or another, I'll do it," Chase says, and he makes a lunge for the kitchen but House yanks back on his arm and Chase loses his balance and goes sprawling onto the floor with a crash that shakes House's bookshelves.

House swallows sick as he stares down at him. Everything in him is screaming that this is not the way that it's supposed to be.

It is almost silent in the apartment, save for Chase on the floor, who is valiantly trying to breathe right again. House stands there and watches him as he chokes back sob after sob, until the apartment is quite silent and Chase is just laying there, not moving or crying. It doesn't take more than a minute or two.

"Sorry," he whispers after a few silent minutes.

"You hurt me," House says. "It can't be any other way. It's not right."

Chase stares unseeingly, cheek pressed against the wooden floor. "Would you like me to hurt you?"

"Yes," House says.

"I can't." Chase's eyes squeeze shut. "I'm sorry. I can't."

And so House takes up the mantle. It's heavy and he wants to throw up because of all the ways it doesn't fit him, but he does it for Chase. For both of them.

"Get up," he orders. "Get on the couch."

Chase inhales, then slowly pushes himself off of the floor and makes his way to the couch. His eyes are low.

"Lay down," House says, when Chase just sits there. He grabs a pillow and hands it over. "Hug it."

Chase obeys. His eyes are closed.

"Now cry."

It takes no more than a minute for the dam to come bursting forth. Chase's sobs burst free and he's curled around the pillow, shaking and choking and wailing as though he's been ripped in two. This is so much bigger than silly, stupid little Cameron. House sits down on the coffee table and though he doesn't say anything, the minute his fingers begin to thread through Chase's hair, Chase is suddenly babbling at him.

Chase asks him questions that deserve no answer. He talks about Cameron. He talks about his parents, some. He even talks about House, calling him a wretched bastard and wanting to know why House couldn't have just let him have his way. He mentions Australia just once. House only half-listens and says nothing because he still can't shake the feeling of how _wrong_ this is, and he's counting down the seconds until it's over.

Eventually, Chase runs out of energy. He's sniffling and hiccuping a little, but House keeps up the soothing motion anyway.

"House?" Chase finally asks, in a slightly more controlled voice.

House's fingers still. "Yep?"

"Will you ask her to come back?'

"Cameron?"

Avoidance was always his favorite game.

"Please?" Chase begs, cracking his eyes open to seek out House's. "Just call her. Ask her to come back, tell her that she can stay and I'll go. She deserves to stay. She's the one who actually likes diagnostics."

"It isn't about deserving," House tells him, even though Cameron sure as shit doesn't deserve to stay. Not after this. Not after doing this to Chase. "She left, you stayed. It's all there is to it."

"She came back once," Chase whispers.

House sucks in a breath. "Fine. I'll call her and ask her to come back—one shot, though. If she says no, I'm not calling her again and you're not going to go after her." She's not worth that. "Deal?"

Chase nods. "Deal."

oOo

Hours later, as Chase sleeps peacefully on his couch with the bedding usually reserved for Wilson, House lays in the dark of his bedroom and stares at his cell phone. He still has Cameron's number in there. He hadn't deleted it when she'd quit, just as he hadn't deleted Chase's when he'd fired him. Part of him does want to call her and tell her to stay the hell away from Chase and Princeton and actually, the entire state of New Jersey as well—but it might send her running back to Chase.

Except Cameron doesn't think that Chase is broken. Poisoned, she'd said. Tainted. Not broken apart and able to be pieced back together, but stained and tarnished and irreversible.

Cameron doesn't like stains.

House stares at her number on his cell phone. He's not going to call her. She doesn't need to know what she's done to Chase, because she's already made her choice. Now, House is making his. Cameron no longer holds any claim to Chase, and in time, Chase would see that the converse was true as well. He would be a free man again, the way House wants him.

And so he shuts the phone and tosses it on the nightstand, and stares at the ceiling some more.

oOo

When House wakes up the following morning, the blankets are folded in the linen closet and the pillows are stacked neatly on top. There's no note on the kitchen table.

He isn't surprised.

House goes into the hospital, partly because he thinks that Chase will be there and partly because he's still feeling shaky from last night and he always goes to the hospital when he's in need of a little normalcy. Thirteen and Taub will be there, at least. He's still got a few pieces of his life unchanged.

After barking at them for a bit and not answering their questions as to where Chase and Cameron are, House takes his cup of coffee out into the hallway and he wanders for a bit. A small part of him is worried that Cameron will have changed her mind and will just appear in the conference room, as though last night never happened, and so he strolls by the room often. It's just Thirteen and Taub. They're starting to give him strange looks whenever he passes by.

He should probably do his clinic duty. He almost wants to, if only to keep his mind off of things.

He wanders around the hospital a bit more before finally beginning to meander in the vague direction of the clinic.

oOo

Wilson corners him halfway there.

"House, I want you to try the Ketamine treatment again," he says, brandishing the paperwork. The bruise around his eye is turning the color of pea soup.

And like that, the tendrils have snaked their way around his ribcage, tightening painfully.

"I'm not doing it," House says. There's a dangerous edge to his voice.

After watching Chase lose control like that last night, he's more than ready to try it himself. Chase has abandoned him, just like Cameron abandoned Chase, and he's entitled to lose control once. Wilson will forgive him. Wilson always forgives him.

Wilson glares. "You're going to do it, House. I'm not giving you a choice."

He should know better than to try to pull the authority card, House thinks as the oily snakes wind their way around his heart and his hand tightens around his cane. Violence is pulsing in him, threads twining together and thickening with every heartbeat. He hates Wilson. He hates that he ever let Wilson think that he had any power over him.

"You have no right," he says tersely, trying to keep the tendrils from climbing up into his throat.

"House, you said it was getting better, but now it's getting worse—do you really want to live on a roller coaster for the rest of your life?" Wilson asks. "Don't you remember the days when it worked? You were running, you were skateboarding, you were _happy_."

_I could wring your neck. _"I'll be happy if you mind your own fucking business—"

House feels a hand lay itself on his shoulder, strong and controlling, and he stops in surprise. A glance back reveals Chase standing there, but all traces of last night are gone. His confidence his back. He's tight with rage and his eyes are hard, and more importantly, they're sane. They're also fixed on Wilson.

"He said no," Chase says, every syllable stretched taut. "Back off."

Wilson is stare at Chase, baffled.

"He isn't your patient and you have no right to pressure him into treatments, now back the hell off," Chase snaps, hand tightening as his temper flares.

House wants to be irritated, to tell Chase that he can defend himself, but he can't seem to speak. Relief is washing over him like a warm bath under the steady weight of Chase's hand, rushing and deep so that he can feel it down in his bones. The tendrils have disappeared from his chest and throat, and he can breathe again.

Wilson is looking to him for help, but House says nothing. He can't. He's still reeling. Wilson's eyes go back to Chase, who is unrelenting.

After a long moment, Wilson grits his teeth. "Fine. Whatever."

He turns and storms off down the hallway, throwing the papers into a trash can.

"Bastard," Chase mutters, letting his hand drop.

"He's not, really," House offers.

Chase looks no less disgusted as he watches Wilson's retreating form.

"I called Cameron this morning," House lies.

Chase watches him with flat eyes.

"She's not coming back."

"Good," Chase says in a hard voice. His eyes go to House, narrowing slightly. "Something tells me you haven't been on your best behavior lately. Have you been naughty?"

The elation in him swells and he can hardly contain himself. "Oh, yeah, that's me. Naughty. Very naughty. Always. Are you going to punish me?"

"Yes."

Then Chase grabs his arm and pulls him forward, moving in the direction of the nearest on-call room. His back is straight and his eyes are clear, and if House could skip he would.

Master's back.


End file.
